Communication Breakdown

We feel very fortunate that Wen and Beza came to us with a fair amount of English under their belt and I’ve commented to many friends that we really haven’t had any huge communication problems.

We’re still working on getting Wen to slow down. When he gets excited he talks super fast and w/ the accent it’s hard to understand him.

Sometimes it is easy for us to forget that there is still a lot they don’t know and are catching on to. Just because they can read something doesn’t mean they understand it, etc.

However, I FINALLY realized that an issue I’d been having with Beza boiled down to a language issue.

See, I would ask her to do something…like “Beza, please take your clean clothes upstairs.” I’d go about my business for a couple of minutes and then find her still doing the other thing.

“Beza, I said to take your clean clothes upstairs.”

“I know Mom!” (in a whiny voice and often interrupting me)

“Well, if you know, then why didn’t you do it?”

“I know Mom!”

“Then why aren’t you doing it???” (me getting ever exasperated)

And then she’d dissolve into tears and or stomp off.

It finally occurred to me that maybe she was meaning to say more of a “okay mom, I heard you”. It doesn’t sound like much of a difference but trust me, when we’d go round and round like this several times a week, it was huge. So we talked it through and she confirmed my thinking.